Category Archives: Political Science

Post navigation

Even for me as a teacher and researcher in political science, explaining world politics to students is often a challenge. The main reason is that many political issues and events are also difficult to understand. Fortunately, politicians often use metaphors that help me explain the political world to my students better. The metaphors I choose to use, however, considerably influence how my students understand the political issues and events under discussion.

Metaphors are figures of speech that define one concept in terms of another concept. In politics, metaphors work by connecting political concepts to non-political concepts. Political debates that are often explained metaphorically are EU debates. For instance, the most common way to discuss Brexit is by referring to a “hard Brexit” or “soft Brexit”. Yet, what does it mean when Brexit is described as “dirty”, “spicy” or “hairy?

Hard or soft Brexit

The metaphors “hard Brexit” and “soft Brexit” compare the negotiations between the EU and UK to the firmness of objects like rocks or pillows. They define how much the EU and the UK are prepared to compromise on issues such as UK’s access to the EU’s internal market. A “hard Brexit” implies firm positions of both parties and therefore a total divorce of the UK from the EU. In contrast, a “soft Brexit” implies that both parties will maintain as close a relationship as possible.

Clean or dirty Brexit

Prime Minister Theresa May introduced alternative metaphors to the Brexit debate. She uses the metaphor “clean Brexit” to describe the UK’s strategy in the Brexit negotiations. Political opponents within the EU have responded that a “dirty Brexit” may instead be more likely. The words clean and dirty generally mean the degree to which objects or places are cleaned and organised. By using the metaphor “clean Brexit” Theresa May emphasises a “clean break” from the EU, meaning that the UK will leave quickly and completely. A “dirty Brexit” rather entails no agreement after months of deliberation.

Nevertheless, there are multiple interpretations of the metaphors “clean Brexit” and “dirty Brexit” possible. They may for example also encourage people to think about the integrity of the Brexit negotiations. A “clean Brexit” would imply that the EU and UK take their time to negotiate a precise, comprehensive and mutually beneficial deal. A “dirty Brexit” may indicate hasty and unfounded judgements. The interpretation of these metaphors thus depends on the context in which they are used and the politicians who use them.

Spicy or mild Brexit

In one of their reports, the European Commission has spoken about a “mild Brexit” scenario, which would be the opposite of a “spicy Brexit”. The words mild and spicy usually indicate whether or not food has a strong hot flavour. In the context of Brexit, one of the most straightforward interpretations is that the words illustrate the degree of consensus between the two parties about important decisions. A “spicy Brexit” is for instance characterised by increased tension between politicians, while in a “mild Brexit” scenario there may not be as much political conflict.

Hairy or shaven Brexit

Finally, Boris Johnson has even warned the UK public for the possibility of a “hairy Brexit”. The positive equivalent of this metaphor would be something like a “shaven Brexit”. In ordinary language, the words hairy and shaven indicate the amount of hair on a body. However, with regard to Brexit, Johnson meant to stress the perceived complexity of the negotiations between the EU and UK. Whereas a “hairy Brexit” is complex and potentially dangerous in terms of the political and economic implications, a “shaven Brexit” may simply run relatively smoothly.

Metaphorical reasoning

Taken together, these examples show how different metaphors can influence our understanding of political issues and events differently. The metaphors “hard Brexit” and “soft Brexit” limit our understanding of Brexit to what outcomes the EU and UK want to achieve. At the same time, metaphors like “dirty Brexit”, “spicy Brexit” and “hairy Brexit” focus on the nature of the negotiations (integrity, political conflict, complexity). These metaphors each emphasise a different aspect of Brexit, which means that they can only provide a complete picture of the political dynamics of Brexit when they are used in combination.

Previous research shows that the degree in which metaphors influence our understanding of politics depends on multiple factors. My own research also focuses on examining when political metaphors are most persuasive. One factor that already seems to be important is the complexity of the topic. The more a political topic is difficult to understand, the more likely people are to rely on metaphors to understand political debates. Since many political issues and events are considerably complex to begin with, metaphors can play a crucial role in our political reasoning.

Thus, explaining world politics to my students becomes easier by using metaphors but it is important to be aware of how these metaphors may influence their understanding of political issues and events. Because each metaphor uses a different non-political concept as the basis for comparison, each metaphor emphasises different aspects of the political concepts under discussion. Therefore, to do justice to the complexity of today’s political world, a diverse set of metaphors is necessary to make my students adequately understand world politics.

Britta Brugman is a PhD candidate in the department of Political Science & Public Administration. Her research focuses on ‘the effects of metaphorical frames on voters’ political attitudes‘.

Last December Suffragette was premiered in Dutch cinemas. The movie is a penetrating account of the hard fight for the introduction of women’s suffrage in the UK at the beginning of the 20th century. The movie is centered on the role of Emmiline Pankhurst and her suffragettes who strive to acquire this basic political right. Moreover, it provides insights into the societal circumstances of the UK at that time. The movie gets you thinking about (women’s) suffrage in general: how come some countries have been much quicker than others in introducing (women’s) suffrage? What are the factors that influenced this process? And, finally how to put the UK’s stance in a comparative perspective?

Although universal suffrage is usually meant to include suffrage for both men and women, well-known and established democratization theories, like the one of Samuel P. Huntington, take male suffrage solely as proxy for measuring democratization. In contrast, as soon as the bar is raised to include women’s suffrage, Huntington’s . Table 1 shows that the timing of male suffrage is not a proxy for the introduction of women’s suffrage. For example, France, Belgium and Switzerland were early in the introduction of male suffrage, but “late” with the introduction of women’s suffrage. In contrast, Austria and Sweden were relatively late in introducing male suffrage, but introduced women’s suffrage “already” just after the First World War. This reveals that an early introduction of male suffrage does not imply an early introduction of women’s suffrage.

As the table shows, both World Wars created a momentum for extending suffrage to women. However, a war cannot as such explain the timing of women’s suffrage as some countries introduced it after the First World War and others only after the Second World War.

Table 1 Introduction of women’s suffrage relative to male suffrage

Although the democratization literature focuses on male suffrage, suffragettes did not escape academic attention, focusing in particular on the success of women’s movement. For example, in her research Lee Ann Banaszak compares the women’s movements in the US and Switzerland. She focuses on the tactics used by the women’s movements in these two countries to explain their (lack of) success; while the US suffragettes were more confrontational, the Swiss movement used a more consensus oriented tactic. While these studies point at the agenda-setting role of suffragettes, they underestimate the constraining or enabling importance of structural conditions. Suffragettes did not emerge and did not operate in a political vacuum. To understand the conditions under which women’s suffrage was introduced early or late,, we have to look at the structural causes. To this effect, I have used Stein Rokkan’s cleavage theory, about fundamental divisions in society. These cleavages concern fundamental conflicts between different societal groups, which played an important role in the process of nation-building.

Rokkan distinguishes between 4 cleavages: 1) ethnic-linguistic, 2) religious, 3) sectoral (agriculture vs. industry), 4) class. It is expected that ethnic-linguistic fragmentation will delay the introduction of women’s suffrage, because the “women’s issue” is swallowed by other political conflicts. The same applies to the presence of a class conflict. With regards to the sectoral cleavage, we would that in a society with a relatively large agricultural sector women’s suffrage is introduced relatively early, because women stand on more equal footing with men than in an industrial society. These cleavages are not mutually exclusive – rather, it is the combination that matters.

In my research of 13 West-European countries the absence of an ethnic-linguistic cleavage is a necessary condition for an early introduction of women’s suffrage (with the notable exception of Finland).

Table 2 Early introduction of women’s suffrage

This is in line with the expectation that either suffrage is extended first to the men of the minority population (at the expense of extending suffrage to women), or this ethnic-linguistic cleavage divides women, preventing them to act as a united front. This absence of the ethnic-linguistic cleavage, however, is not sufficient – see France and Italy (table 3). In these countries a religious cleavage, combined with a class cleavage, result in the late introduction of women’s suffrage.

Table 3 Late introduction of women’s suffrage

Moreover, in contrast to Teri Carraway claims, my study shows that the class cleavage does not necessarily delay the introduction of women’s suffrage; it all depends on the presence of a religious cleavage.In short, to explain the timing of the introduction of women’s suffrage in Western Europe we have to take into account the societal conditions of a given country. However, this does not play down the importance of the agency of women to put the issue of women’s suffrage on the agenda, as highlighted by Lee Ann Banaszak.

A lot has changed since the introduction of women’s suffrage – the legal and actual position of women in the public realm has been much improved. Nevertheless, the discussion about the position of women in the public domain is still a matter of debate, e.g. the “glass ceiling” in academia and business.

The fight for formal political equality was just a start!

Which structural cleavages play a role in these “new” fights for equality?

____________

Trineke Palm MSc is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration. Her research is funded by a NWO Research Talent Grant and deals with the character of the EU’s foreign policy.

Why would anyone interested in peace (like me) go and look at a violence-packed superhero movie for inspiration? Doesn’t violence in movies lead to real world violence? Well, the evidence on that question is still inconclusive and Avengers: age of Ultron, when viewed with the right kind of questions in mind, offers insights into peace you just won’t find in arthouse beauties such as One day after peace.

Sure, most people going to watch the movie will do so because they enjoy the highly stylized violence, the beautifully choreographed fights, the exploding buildings or the testosterone packed jokes by the main characters. But the film also explicitly deals with the victims of the Avengers’ violent way of solving conflicts and the plot is driven to a large extent by various desires for peace going awry. Moreover, in the lulls between fights, the protagonists inadvertently end up having quite philosophical conversations on the meaning of peace, coming up with no less than five different conceptualizations of the term.

If you haven’t seen the movie yet, you might find this post contains either spoilers or things you totally don’t understand. I apologize for the former and try to make up for the latter by explanatory hyperlinks. That said, here are the five concepts of peace that drive the plot development and make Age of Ultron one of the most interesting peace-related films I have seen in a long time.

The first view of peace present in Age of Ultron reminded me of what I heard from people working at NATO: peace means the absence of any and all threats to human life. It is this drive for total security that leads Tony Stark, one of the heroes, to build Ultron, who then turns into the main villain of the movie (see below for his idea of peace).

Stark’s vision of total security necessarily remains Utopian. As Anthony Giddens pointed out a long time ago, there will always be threats to humanity’s existence, and trying to control for all of them inexorably leads to new dangers. Or to a totalitarian dictatorship, the central message of Captain America: the Winter soldier, another Marvel superhero movie.

S.H.I.E.L.D.: Saving civilian lives

Evacuation of citizens of Sokovia

On a much less ambitious reading of peace, the rebuilt employment agency for superheroes, SHIELD, limits its role to saving civilians from the combat zones where the Avengers do their job. Even if the town of Sokovia is annihilated by Ultron, at least the people living there get out of it alive and thus might be able to find peace again elsewhere. This echoes the Just War criterium of discrimination, the idea that armies ought to distinguish between innocent civilians and enemy combatants, and only target the latter. In the real world, it also seems to mirror (highly dubious) efforts by the Israeli army to get civilians out of the way before moving in to fight with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

However, we can rightfully ask whether the refugees in question would agree that this is a form of peace. Taking their cue from Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, some present-day critics of liberal peacebuilding point out that safeguarding the ‘bare lives’ of civilians does not really suffice to speak of any kind of peace ‘worth having’. Even though in mainstream academic literature, armed conflict is only defined in terms of how many people die as a result of the conflict: as long as nobody dies, there is peace. I have criticized this view in a previous blogpost.

Dr. Banner (the Hulk): inner peace

The Hulk : “This idea of inner peace as a tranquil state of mind is found both in Eastern philosophy and in St. Augustine’s musings on the subject”

Back to the movie. Dr. Banner, Tony Stark’s superhero partner also known as the Hulk, tries to come to grips with his (and mankind’s?) violent nature. Already in the first Avengers movie, Banner was found taking yoga classes in India, trying to control the violence in himself. At the end of Age of Ultron he flees his companions and sends a postcard from Fiji, supposedly having found peace there by sitting on a beach watching the sun set.

This idea of inner peace as a tranquil state of mind is found both in Eastern philosophy and in St. Augustine’s musings on the subject. It does have one major drawback though, as Natasja Romanov, a.k.a. Black Widow, points out in the movie while shoving dr. Banner off a cliff: “I adore you, but I need the other guy right now”. In order to save the world, the Hulk has to give up his inner peace and engage himself with the world, through violence if need be. This is the same criticism pacifists have received ever since the term was first invented: in a bad world, you have to make dirty hands.

Ultron: harmonious balance with all of nature

Ultron: “His conclusion that mankind can never learn to live in peace and thus should be ‘saved from itself’ is a step too far”

The theme of peace is running so strongly through the film that even the bad guy, Ultron, is driven by a desire for peace. Built by Tony Stark with the aim of creating ‘Peace in our time’ (a rather obvious reference to Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler), cinematic logic demands that Ultron decides the best way to achieve this peace is the eradication of mankind. Our violent nature means we will never be able to live in peace, so perhaps we should just die out and make room for another, more peaceful species. Ultron sincerely cannot believe the Avengers, with their violent way of dealing with conflicts, are in any way agents of peace. He is probably right about that. His conclusion that mankind can never learn to live in peace and thus should be ‘saved from itself’, however, is a step too far for even the most radical eco-hippies. It does mirror the idea of peace as ‘living in harmony with all of creation’ though, adding another layer to the movie’s philosophical dealing with peace.

Hawkeye: peace as normality

Hawkeye: peace as normality: “As long as his family is safe from physical harm, he knows both inner peace and lives in harmony with his environment”

One of the big surprises of this movie comes approximately halfway, when Hawkeye, a side character famous for shooting explosive arrows, turns out to have a family living in an idealistic mid-West cottage, apparently without 21st century technology. This cottage is the counterpoint to all the violence in the movie and the viewer is left with the distinct impression that Hawkeye is best off of all the superheroes. As long as his family is safe from physical harm, he knows both inner peace and lives in harmony with his environment. Which might be a lame conclusion for a superhero movie if you are a testosterone-filled 21-year-old comic geek, but it is the kind of peace your parents will definitely identify with.

So what have we learned from this brief exploration of Avengers: age of Ultron? I would say three things. First, peace and security are not the same thing, and the desire for total security threatens all other forms of peace we might be after. Secondly, if all we want is to safeguard our own inner peace, we leave the world to the bad guys. Sometimes we just “need the other guy.” Even though his violent acts might stand in the way of more durable solutions to the world’s problems. Finally, I would say that Hawkeye understands peace best of all. It is a lived experience, not some Utopian dream.

_____________

Gijsbert van Iterson Scholten is a PhD candidate at the department of Political Science and Public Administration. His research focuses on how different peacebuilding professionals define peace.

In the spring of 2013 I stayed in Brussels for 3 weeks to interview policy-makers, military, diplomats and politicians on the development of the EU’s military operations. Interviewing is great fun, but also requires specific skills. Since there is relatively little guidance for doing interviews with elites & experts, let me share some first-hand experiences with you.

The people I spoke with, all have expert knowledge on EU military operations and the ability/opportunity to influence decision-making in this policy domain. Hence, they can be classified as both elites and experts (Littig 2009). This really sets those interviewees apart from conducting interviews with “normal” people who do not have a particular professional expertise and influential position in society. Expert interviews are all about: interest, power, control and hierarchy (Abels & Behrens 2009). How did I deal with these issues? Here are some practical tips:

Pre-interview: gaining access

Experts and elites are busy people. So, they’ll probably suggest to do it by phone or email. Don’t settle for that! Indicate that you are very flexible (make sure you really are!) and available to meet anywhere in a particular period of time (a few weeks). To make sure that your interviewees make some time for you, they have to see you as a competent scholar who is worthy to spend their valuable time with. This means that in your email you make abundantly clear that speaking to the particular interviewee is of great importance to your research. For this it helps to show that you know their CV. Also, attach two documents to your email:

A topic list indicating the topics you want to address in the interview. Although one could argue that you run the risk of too much transparency (e.g. you may steer the interview by explaining too well what you are after), I argue that it helps you gain access in the first place, and that this outweighs the potential disadvantages.

An informed consent form. Although anonymity may be required, this way you can at least “proof” that you actually spoke with people and you were not just inventing your data. Moreover, while elites are well aware of the sensitivity of the information they provide, their influential position makes them vulnerable as well. Hence, to explicitly agree on the way the interview data is dealt with is part of a scientific and ethical approach towards conducting interviews – including expert interviews. Moreover, I had the impression that it contributed significantly to presenting myself as a competent scholar.

The interview itself: a balancing act

Since experts are accustomed to talk about their field of expertise and aiming at conveying a particular message (for strategic purposes), during the interviews itself some balancing acts are required.

Central to all introductions of conducting good interviews is that you have to ask open questions: You have to be open to what the interviewee is about to say and allow the interviewee to lead the conversation (Littig 2009). Take care however, that you do not end up listening for more than an hour to information that is irrelevant for you. You don’t want to leave the room without having raised the issues that are important to you!

Hence, you’ll have to complement this open approach with leading questions. These induce the interviewee to go beyond the strategic message he/she aims to deliver. Of course you should make sure not to end up in a discussion with your interviewee – it’s not about what you think. Yet, by referring to other interviews, statements in newspapers/policy documents, or hypothetical situations you can confront your interviewee with competing viewpoints/explanations.

Dare to drop a silence. Your interviewee may need to think for a while, and a silence subtly encourages them to further elaborate on the topic.

Moreover, summarize what your interviewee has said, not only to make sure that you understand the interviewee correctly, but also as a follow-up to another question.

The avoidable risks

Abels en Behrens (in Littig 2009) distinguish some typical risks in the conversation with elites/experts. You have to know the risks to avoid them:

The interviewee may take a paternalistic attitude, and not take you very seriously. Instead of answering questions about the topic of interest, this type of interviewee may want to give you some “advice” on your research design. Either allow the interviewee to make his main point in this regard, or propose to come back to this issue at the end of the interview. You may partly use this to your advantage – at least the interviewee does not see you as a threat;

The interviewee may act as an iceberg, i.e. is not really willing to share information. This is a difficult, but in my experience also quite rare, situation. You can avert it by starting off with an open question about his/her position: this allows the interviewee to say a little more about him/herself, which make most icebergs melt.

The interviewee may ask your opinion on the topic. This one is the most challenging, as you are indeed usually knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the topic. Yet, make sure that you don’t fall into this trick, as the interview is not about your opinion. Smile, thank the interviewee for asking and state that you are more than happy to provide him/her with the report once the research is finished.

Post-interview: stay in touch and keep control

After the interview, transcribe the interview and send it to the interviewee for a final check. This is a nice opportunity for dissemination of your data and a great way to stay in touch! Although some scholars (Dexter 1970/2006) argue that elites use “their roles as gatekeepers to information to control the conclusions the researcher may draw”. I have, however, luckily never experienced that. The informed consent form may also help in this regard because you’ve clearly discussed how you will deal with the transcription beforehand.

After having conducted a number of interviews, you’ll notice that not all interviewees have been of equal importance. While it is important to detect patterns and find a red thread, when interviewing experts and elites it is not so much about the consensus and the numbers. Rather, exceptions, deviations and unusual interpretations may be of great value to your research, particularly when provided by interviewees whose account is comprehensive, plausible and consistent.

In sum, when you are aware of the particularities of interviewing experts, they are a rich source of information. Moreover, because of their influential positions, they may turn out to be an important channel for the dissemination of your research.

Be well prepared, don’t get too much impressed and gently keep control. Good luck!

♦ Need to develop or refresh some fundamental interviewing-skills? Check out the summer course “Interviewing individuals and groups” offered by the VU Graduate School of Social Sciences ♦

___________

Trineke Palm MSc is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration. Her research is funded by a NWO Research Talent Grant and deals with the character of the EU’s foreign policy.

For my PhD in political science, I study the meaning of peace. Not in the dictionary sense of the word, but in practice: as an objective of ‘peace work’. Why and how you would want to do that is the subject of another blog. When studying the meaning of peace, you will very soon find out that the dictionary sense of the word is not going to help you make sense of most peace work. For instance, the most widely used academic measure of peace boils down to ‘a situation in which no more than 24 people die in a given year because of armed violence.’ But how does that relate to working on post-conflict reconciliation? Or to building democratic institutions? Let alone to peace education or youth peace camps? The amount of people dying is far too crude a measure to serve as an indicator for the success or failure of such peacebuilding work. So my question became: what could be a good indicator? To answer this question, I first had to find out what people were actually trying to achieve with their peace-work.

As part of this quest, I recently interviewed a series of peace workers in Lebanon, asking what peace means to them. What is peace in Lebanon? Considering that peace is a word that lacks a plural, they gave me a surprising variety of answers.

This is not to say that there is no political notion of peace in the Middle East. There is. The ‘peace process’ (or lack thereof) between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab countries is an example of this political kind of peace. It is even the first thing many Lebanese mention when you ask them about peace.

In Arabic this peace is called salaam. Etymologically, as well as in the minds of people, salaam is related to the word Islam, which is ‘(inner) peace through submission to God’s will’. This element of submission is, to my mind, why so many Arab people reject this form of peace: it is not that they necessarily want to wage a total war against Israel, they just don’t want to surrender to it either. A peace between sovereign equals (like the paradigmatic Peace of Westphalia) is just not the kind of peace that Lebanese have in mind when they talk about peace in the political sense of that word. To them peace (salaam) means submission. Hence, almost all organizations working on other forms of peace are very careful to point out that they have nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict, nor with politics in general.

Instead, many organizations are working on a ‘civil peace’, or silim in Arabic: establishing good relations between Lebanon’s many different religious groups. This is important, because the political situation in Lebanon is so very tense. And because a breakdown of civil peace leads to civil war in the way Hobbes wrote about it: a war of all against all. This is something no Lebanese who has lived through the civil war wants to experience again. Even if they have grown accustomed to low level political violence. A car bomb detonating in the middle of Beirut is considered no more of a nuisance than a traffic accident, but this violence should never be allowed to spiral out of control again.

On an even more individual level, peace is associated with personally not using violence in your relations with other people. Former combatants from different sides, united in an organization called Fighters for Peace, accentuate the need for a personal commitment to non-violence as the only guarantee for peace. Even if they are privately wondering whether it is wise to uphold such a commitment when you are facing an enemy like the Islamic State.

The most personal kind of peace that people are working on is inner peace: peace of mind. A range of trauma counselors, religiously inspired actors and social and humanitarian workers claim that this is the kind of peace they want to contribute to. Mostly because they believe any other form of peace will only last if people are ready to accept it, and acceptance depends on their state of mind.

Finally, there are some peace activists who see peace explicitly not as a noun, but as an adjective. They share the personal commitment for not using violence, but add another normative goal to it: justice. In the eyes of non-violent activists, peace is not a state of affairs at all, but a way of acting (silmiya, peacefully). Which does make peace political again: it is ‘the continuation of policy by political means only’ (to paraphrase Clausewitz). Peace however, is no longer the objective of this policy, which makes it fundamentally different from the peace process with Israel. Justice is not submission, although peace can mean both things. As well as three others.

So, what is peace in Lebanon? The honest answer is that I am not entirely sure. Which also means that I am not entirely sure whether one can say that there is peace in Lebanon or not. But at least these five concepts give us some clue what it would mean to say there is peace. Which is infinitely more than counting dead people can ever tell us.

_____________

Gijsbert van Iterson Scholten is a PhD candidate at the department of Political Science and Public Administration. His research focuses on how different peacebuilding professionals define peace.

By Gijsbert van Iterson Scholten / Reading Time: 5 Minutes
I study peace. Which is quite unusual. In political science, but even in peace and conflict studies. Many people say they study peace, but really what they study is war. Or ‘armed conflict’, which is war on a smaller scale. These people argue that peace is the absence of war. Hence, if we understand what causes war to either erupt or end, we will also know something about how to keep or achieve peace. Which makes some sense. But problems arise as soon as you are talking about peace-building in post-conflict situations, in frozen low-intensity conflicts or as a preventative measure. You cannot judge the success of these activities solely in terms of how much armed violence they have prevented. Both because it is very difficult to measure violence that did not happen, and because peace is much more than the absence of war.

To explain this to readers unfamiliar with peace and conflict studies, I will introduce a metaphor. I am not sure whether the metaphor works, but it might be illuminating, so let’s give it a try. Let’s say that war is like darkness, and peace is like light. This carries some beautiful religious overtones, and is thus very useful for Christmas dinner conversations or other midwinter nights. In a situation of total and utter darkness, you will want some light. That makes sense. Just as, in really desperate cases of war, you want peace. Any peace. This light can come from many sources: candles, classical light bulbs, low-energy light bulbs (CFLs), oil lamps, led-lights, a fire, a pocket torchlight. Even a match will do when you’re really afraid of the dark. Likewise, peace can come from many sources: armed intervention (or winning the war), promoting non-violence, statebuilding, democracy, improved standards of living, trade, meditation or peace education.

It is an empirical question which of these mechanisms does ‘better’ in terms of preventing or ending armed conflict, just as it is an empirical question how much light stadium lights provide compared to matches. On a quantitative approach to peace, this is as far as you can get. But more interesting than the amount of light (peace) a certain intervention brings, is the question what kind of light is needed for this situation. Especially when it is not totally dark.

Then you might not want to risk burning your fingers on a match, especially not if the match will not add much to the already shadowy illumination. And when you are feeling sleepy, lighting a candle to drive away the darkness might not be the best solution (as your local fire brigade will no doubt be glad to tell you). Making love (instead of war) is best done by soft candlelight, whereas rebuilding calls for construction lights. Comparable advantages and disadvantages can be found for all other forms of illumination, but the point is clear.

In a situation of total darkness you might want any kind of light, but as soon as there is some light to go by, you have to start thinking about the pros and cons of different forms of lighting.

It is the same with peace. In a situation of total war, like the Syrian conflict, it is extremely useful to think of different strategies to stop this war and try any of them. But fortunately, in most other conflicts the situation is not as dark as it is there. Which means that you have to think carefully about the kind of light (the kind of peace) you are bringing to those situations.

You can’t do this solely by studying the darkness and measuring its depth. You have to study the varieties of peace, as phenomena in and of themselves. Because different (post-) conflict situations call for different forms of peace. Sometimes you will need reconciliation, sometimes accountability. Sometimes you will have to work on people’s mindset, sometimes on institutional constraints. Sometimes you will want a candle, sometimes construction lights. What you probably don’t want is to set the world on fire, even though in a situation of total darkness this will provide some light.

But, unless you study peace as a positive phenomenon, you will have no idea what the candle, the construction lights and the fire are metaphors for. I am open to suggestions.

________

Gijsbert van Iterson Scholten is a PhD candidate at the department of Political Science and Public Administration. His research focuses on how different peacebuilding professionals define peace.

by Trineke Palm / Reading Time: 4 Minutes / “We ‘had’ to break the whole thing (European Economic Community) up, so we had to get inside. We tried to break it up from the outside, but that wouldn’t work. … Continue reading →